Honesty
–Connie Wanek

I could easily be honest
if I were certain of the truth.
You remember the day as sunny and hot,
the car an oven, the air
rippling over the green chile fields.
I remember clouds building in the western sky
as quickly as if there’d been an explosion
out where the military tested
something big and vastly expensive
over and over.

Everyone seems so confident.
Those letters to the editor: “Get real” and
“Wake up, people!” The man from Pengilly
who keeps “loaded guns in readily accessible locations.”

I honestly don’t know why I had children
or why I sew, or garden,
except that if it’s true we’re made in God’s image
we are born to create, or to try-
though when you smile at my earnestness
I see that you’re right, I am naive.

I remember when our daughter realized
it was possible not to tell the truth.
She was three years old.
I saw something pass over her eyes, a petit mal,
leaving a kind of bright residue,
the shimmer of a most attractive lie, a fairy tale
no one had told her; yet she suddenly knew,
about a girl who never pinched a friend
however much she deserved it.

A hour passes and I’m no longer angry,
though it’s true I was.
Sunlight streams through the screen door-
a late clearing, just as you predicted.
We’re together in the kitchen,
a friendly bumping as we wash and slice
the green and red, yellow and white
ingredients, and stir them all in the kettle
until nothing is exclusively itself.